Web directory
From Free net encyclopedia
A web directory is a directory on the World Wide Web that specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links. Web directories often allow site owners to submit their site for inclusion. Human editors review submissions for fitness.
An alternative portal to the web is using search engines, web sites that index other sites based on keywords.
Famous web directories are Yahoo! Directory, LookSmart, and the Open Directory Project. ODP is an important player in the directory market, perhaps because of its open content approach to editorial review and its use by Google. Zeal, is now closed.
A debate over quality in directories and databases continues, as search engines use ODP's content without real integration, and some experiment using clustering. There have been many attempts to make directory development easier, whether using a "links for all" type link submission site using a script, or any number of available PHP portals and programs. Recently, social software techniques have spawned new efforts of categorization, with Amazon.com adding tagging to their product pages.
Human-edited directories are often targeted as part of a strategy for being indexed in the major search engines. The idea being that a new site needs to quickly build inbound links from reputable sources in order to have higher rankings within search engine results.
See also
de:Webverzeichnis es:Directorio web fr:Annuaire Web he:מדריך אתרים nl:Webindex ja:ウェブディレクトリ ru:Каталог ресурсов в Интернете sv:Länkkatalog